I must back up David Haberstitch's take on this.  Although there will
always been some history professors who look down on a more practical
application of historical scholarship, I think the trend is very quickly
moving away from that attitude, and, like David, I have yet to meet a
history professor that wasn't supportive of my career choice or happy to
help out when called upon to serve as an advisor, help write programs, or
even conduct workshops and lectures in a museum setting. Major history
journals are more and more including museum exhibit reviews in their pages
and many newsletters such as the AHA's Perspective include regular columns
on many areas of Public History. A rather lively set of which included
debates on how to consider work done by academic historians in a museum
setting when deciding tenure. Excellent stuff and well overdue. I have no
statistics at my finger tips, but I believe the number of History programs
with Public History or Museum Studies concentrations is growing as is
membership in the National Council for Public History. I am not saying
there is no "rift" in some areas or that some professors are not petty and
condescending toward museum professionals, but these cases are becoming
more rare with each passing year and I would echo other's advice to dump
these people and look for more supportive advisors.

Have a nice day,

Matthew White
Director of Museums
Mount Washington Observatory

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